Iceland’s financial system is outperforming most European friends following the common implementation of a shortened working week with no pay loss, in response to a research launched on Friday.
Between 2020 and 2022, 51% of staff within the nation accepted the provide of shorter working hours, together with a four-day week, in response to two suppose tanks, with the proportion anticipated to rise additional right now, as reported by CNN Enterprise.
Iceland skilled better financial development final 12 months than different European international locations, and its unemployment price is among the many lowest in Europe, in response to the Autonomy Institute in the UK and Iceland’s Affiliation for Sustainability and Democracy (Alda).
“This research exhibits an actual success story: shorter working hours have grow to be widespread in Iceland… and the financial system is powerful throughout a number of indicators,” Gudmundur D. Haraldsson, a researcher at Alda, stated in an announcement.
In two vital trials between 2015 and 2019, public sector workers in Iceland labored 35-36 hours per week with no pay minimize. Many members had beforehand labored a 40-hour week.
The research lined 2,500 individuals, or greater than 1% of Iceland’s working inhabitants on the time, and had been designed to keep up or improve productiveness whereas bettering work-life steadiness. Researchers found that productiveness remained secure or improved within the majority of organizations, whereas staff’ well-being improved “dramatically” on quite a lot of metrics, together with perceived stress and burnout, well being, and work-life steadiness.
Following the trials, Icelandic commerce unions negotiated decreased working hours for tens of 1000’s of members throughout the nation.
In response to the Worldwide Financial Fund’s most up-to-date World Financial Outlook, printed earlier this week, Iceland’s GDP will improve by 5% in 2023, trailing simply Malta amongst wealthy European economies. That’s considerably better than the nation’s common development price of about 2% all through the last decade 2006-2015.
Nonetheless, the IMF predicts a lot slower development in Iceland this 12 months and subsequent.
“Development is predicted to say no in 2024 on additional softening home demand and decelerating development in tourism spending,” the company stated of the tourism-dependent financial system in an evaluation in July.
Iceland’s low unemployment price is “a robust indicator of the financial system’s vitality,” in response to the Autonomy Institute and Alda.
operate loadFacebookScript(){
!operate(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=operate(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.model=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
doc,’script’,’https://join.facebook.web/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘529056027274737’);
fbq(‘monitor’, ‘PageView’);
}
window.addEventListener(‘load’, (occasion) => {
setTimeout(operate(){
loadFacebookScript();
}, 5000);
});
Discover more from News Journals
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
